This Network Betting It Can Rein In Horseplayers

October 20, 1999|By Gary Dretzka, Tribune Staff Writer.

LOS ANGELES — It's difficult to fathom what Damon Runyon and Bugsy Siegel would have made of the fledgling TVG network, which promises railbirds 24-hour horse racing action from the comfort of their living rooms.

But just imagining a day when the clandestine wire rooms of yore would be made obsolete by live television feeds and remote-control betting--and cigar-smoking touts would stand aside for a group of shiny-faced youths who wouldn't look out of place in a Gap commercial--probably would have been too much to ask, even of the great chronicler of New York's criminal demimonde and the man who invented Las Vegas.

Yet that's pretty much what's happening at the Television Games Network broadcast facility on the far west side of Los Angeles, where the nation's newest all-sports channel has been in business for about three months.

While the studio--where, today, Caton Bredar and Gary Mandella are ensconced behind the anchor desk--very much resembles the brightly lit set of ESPN's "SportsCenter," the darkened master-control room is a facsimile of the sports book at Caesars Palace. Races from tracks around the country are being monitored by a team of directors and producers who communicate through headsets and seem only minimally concerned about the outcome of the stretch duels being played out in front of them.

In Kentucky, only a few thousand horseplayers actually can make use of the service, which they receive via a big-dish satellite network. The races they're betting on emanate from Ellis Park--in their own back yard--as well as tracks stretching from Saratoga to Del Mar.

If all goes according to plan, however, aficionados across the country eventually will be able to use their remote controls, PCs or telephones to place bets through an interactive wagering hub located in Oregon. The action won't stop with the late double at Los Alamitos, either, as plans call for simulcasts from Hong Kong, Japan, Australia and Europe.

"Our rollout plans are very modest, because we don't want to have an AOL overload situation here, if we can avoid it," explained Mark D. Wilson, president and chief executive officer of TVG, sitting in the new National Digital Television Center facility here. "We're launching on Superstar Netlink, which is a big-dish network that reaches almost 1.1 million subscribers. We're sending it out nationwide, even though we only took wagering through an existing system in Kentucky for the first month.

"Past that, we plan to transition the wager processing to Oregon, where--like Kentucky--there's a specific statute that allows it, and there's also a good tax rate."

The idea is for customers to set up accounts through an Oregon bank, which will keep track of individual transactions and make payouts to players and TVG partners in the racing industry.

This type of wagering is nothing new. Gamblers with access to telephone accounts in Pennsylvania, New York and Connecticut have been able to bet on races there for years, and off-shore Internet action has exploded in the '90s, as well.

What makes TVG different is that it is the first such enterprise to have invested as much time, energy and money in the entertainment product as it has in the gambling apparatus. It also helps that it is backed by TV Guide Inc., which is jointly owned by Liberty Media Corp. and News Corp., which owns Fox Sports; the National Thoroughbred Racing Association; and AT&T Broadband and Internet Services (formerly TCI).

Because of the participation of the NTRA, certain assurances have been provided by TVG that money will be poured back into the coffers of individual tracks and the racing industries in states where the telecasts originated. The association also is hoping that the bright, casual and often remedial approach of the reporting teams will endear newcomers to the sport, while not infuriating longtime fans who could benefit from the graphically enhanced presentation of handicapping data, real-time track odds, weather and equipment updates and jockey/driver stats.

"We're not Las Vegas, and never have been--we're a sport, No. 1, and our job is to present programming for this industry," stressed Wilson, who previously was president of R.D. Hubbard enterprises. "Betting does drive the industry, but even the way you wager on us is fundamentally different. In horse racing, there's no house . . . you wager against each other."

TVG's business model, he adds, is based on making money three ways: wagering, advertising on the cable network and through merchandising and licensing.